Why Didn’t Joseph Call Home?

The Hebrew Bible contains many unanswered questions and questions for which the answers provided seem inadequate. This, however, is part of the charm of Torah; it challenges us to exercise our powers of conjecture and imagination to supply plausible responses.

One of the most intriguing of these questions involves Joseph’s behavior after he has risen to such heights in the Egyptian bureaucracy that he is second only to Pharaoh himself. You will recall that Joseph’s brothers, jealous of Joseph’s special place in his father Jacob’s affections and incensed at the hubris reflected in his dreams, strip him of his many-colored coat and cast him into a pit. He is eventually sold into slavery in Egypt. To explain Joseph’s absence to their father, the brothers dip Joseph’s coat in the blood of a young goat and present it to Jacob as evidence that his beloved favorite son has been devoured by a wild beast. Jacob refuses to be comforted in his grief: “ ‘I will go down to Sheol mourning for my son,’ Thus his father bewailed him” (Genesis 37:35b).